Jules Lobel: Pelican Bay prisoners trapped in inhumane conditions

By Jules Lobel

Special to the Mercury News

Posted:
07/15/2013 01:00:00 PM PDT

Updated:
07/15/2013 03:34:19 PM PDT

On Monday, 30,000 prisoners in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison in California went on hunger strike to protest solitary confinement and security unit conditions -- risking their lives for the chance to be freed from torturous conditions.

In the Pelican Bay security unit, prisoners spend 22½ to 24 hours a day in a cramped, concrete, windowless cell. They are denied telephone calls, physical contact with family, vocational, recreational, or educational programming, and they are frequently denied medical care. Food is often rotten and barely edible, and temperatures can be extremely hot or extremely cold. Though solitary confinement for as little as 15 days can cause lasting psychological damage and is recognized as a human rights abuse, California routinely confines prisoners in the security unit for decades. In the words of one Pelican Bay prisoner, the unit is "a living tomb."

It is also Kafkaesque. Prisoners land in the security unit not for crimes they were convicted of, not for any rule violation or violent act while in prison, but based on the slimmest pretext of "affiliation" with a gang; there is no requirement that the prisoner has ever actually been involved in gang activity. And there is essentially no way out. Once every six years, a prisoner's security unit designation is reassessed -- and nearly always renewed on the basis of unsubstantiated claims by unidentified informants or possession of allegedly gang-related art, tattoos, or written material.

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Luis Esquivel, who has spent the last 13 years in the Pelican Bay security unit, and who is a plaintiff in a Center for Constitutional Rights lawsuit challenging California's security unit confinement as cruel and unusual punishment, was "revalidated" as a member of the Mexican Mafia based on his possession of Aztec artwork.

Security unit prisoners' only real option to get out of the unit is to risk their safety and that of their loved ones by "debriefing," or informing on other prisoners -- essentially landing another prisoner in the unit in order to get themselves out. Frequently, prisoners have no information to offer in exchange for getting out of the unit, which makes debriefing impossible, even if they wanted to choose that route.

By hunger striking, the Pelican Bay prisoners are joining a long and venerated history of individuals and groups who have starved themselves, sometimes to death, in order to nonviolently resist oppression, bring attention to their struggle, and free themselves or others from unjust, unbearable conditions.

Cesar Chavez, Indian independence activists and Palestinian prisoners all refused food to bring attention to important causes. Choosing whether or not to eat is one of the few things prisoners can control. It is one of their only avenues of peaceful protest.

The hunger strike that began July 8 is the third for the Pelican Bay prisoners. In July and October 2011, they engaged in hunger strikes demanding an end to long-term solitary confinement, improved security unit conditions, and reforms to the process of security unit placement and release. These strikes ultimately involved 12,000 prisoners across California. Both strikes were called off when the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation agreed to implement reforms. But, in an all too familiar betrayal, the department has not followed through.

The Pelican Bay prisoners are trapped in inhumane conditions. Like hunger strikers before them, the Pelican Bay prisoners are drawing the world's attention to their struggle. It is time for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to respond by changing the system.

Jules Lobel, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, represents the prisoners at Pelican Bay in a lawsuit challenging long-term solitary confinement in California prisons. He wrote this article for this newspaper.